FBI Document Dump Proves This Woman Has No Business Anywhere Near Power

Oct 18, 2016

RUSH: I’m guessing that many of you do not know this, but there was another dump of 100 pages from the FBI yesterday relating to the investigation of Hillary Clinton. Folks, I’m here to tell you, there is no way this woman ought to be anywhere near the Oval Office. She ought not be anywhere near the White House. I don’t care what Donald Trump’s faults are. I don’t care what people think of Donald Trump. This woman has no business. I can’t believe, after looking at these documents — and I could do the whole program on these. And, who knows, I might.

This is astounding what the FBI dumped yesterday. Why this hasn’t been dumped earlier is obvious. It is damning! It is destroying of Hillary Clinton, as a person, as a secretary of state. I go through all these emails. Have any of you who’ve spent any time going through any of the emails, part of the WikiLeaks dump, are you seeing anybody that works for her talk about what a nice person she is? I am not. I see references to friends of Bill that need this and friends of Bill that need that. I don’t see any references to friends of Hillary.

I’m reading a bunch of people who are doing what they can to advance this woman’s career because it is their job and because through her they maybe get to advance what their agenda is; but I’m here to tell you, there doesn’t appear to be any personal attachment beyond Huma in any of these, including Podesta. You know, Podesta is actually a Bill guy. Podesta was Bill’s chief of staff sent over there, runs the Center for American Progress, a leftist think tank, and is now over there steering the Hillary campaign.

I’m telling you, folks, it’s incredible. And this 100 pages — and most of it’s redacted. The stuff that they haven’t redacted is damning. It makes Watergate look like Romper Room. And I’m wondering, what in the hell were they doing at the FBI when they decided none of this was actionable? This goes so far beyond quid pro quo. Of course that’s a big, big deal.

But all the stories that we heard back when the Clintons were in the White House about Hillary disliking the Marines, disrespecting the Marines, throwing ashtrays, apparently it’s true, because she did it at the State Department. She was so mean to people that State Department security agents, which they have, every bureaucracy has security agents that travel with the ambassadors, with the secretary of state. None of them wanted to work for her. They all quit over the four-year time she was in the secretary of state’s office. None of them.

The people that ended up on her detail were brand-new and had no idea. They were the last ones to go there because everybody else begged off, because she was just plain and simple mean and rude and disrespectful. She was violating protocol at every turn. As an example, one of the parent protocols is that when the secretary of state’s traveling, you get off the plane and you always join the ambassador to whatever country you’re in. The ambassador gets in a limo with you, it’s a security thing, too, from the airport into the embassy or wherever you’re going.

In other words, when you get off the plane in a foreign country, you are joined at the hip with the ambassador. She never would do it.

The only person allowed to get closer to is Huma Abedin and whoever this guy that runs around with her, this big, big black guy who is there rubbing her back and telling her just keep talking, just keep breathing. He’s obviously some medic, and he’s constantly around her. Other than this guy and Huma Abedin, she just blows off everybody and everything. You can’t find any references, or very few, to people with any affection for her. They’re all working for her and they’re all trying to rig the game for her, but there doesn’t seem to be any affection.

It’s amazing what’s in these 100 pages alone, and these are from the FBI. This is not WikiLeaks. This is not the result of a hack. They can’t say that the Russians are behind this. Now, I don’t think that any of this is gonna end up in the Drive-By Media. Because they are part of this. Well, that’s part of the WikiLeaks dump, too. But reporters are sending their stories to John Podesta for vetting before they’re published. One guy, Glenn Thrush from Politico says (paraphrasing), “Hey, look, now that I’ve become a (hack) for you guys, I’ve got this story. Here it is. Make sure it’s right before I run with it.”

This is happening constantly, not just recently, but constantly with Mrs. Clinton. He’s not the only one. All of them, practically everybody in the mainstream media is on her team and coordinating with her and her campaign about how to do stories, what stories to do, what to leave out of them and so forth.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now to the FBI document dump. It’s a hundred pages and it’s dynamite, and it’s just astounding, folks. You look at this and you wonder how in the world did this woman not get charged? How in the world did this not get sent to the grand jury? Of course, we know. President Obama didn’t want it. He didn’t want any of it going anywhere because he’s implicated in it. He lied. He said he learned about Hillary’s private server while watching the news just like all of us, except that’s not true.

He was regularly communicating with her via her private server and all this suspicious email activity using a fake name, a pseudonym, if you will. He was fully aware. And that’s why to go after her would have included him, and ah, ah, ah, ah, not going to happen. I did as much looking into this as I could, and I have to tell you, John Hinderaker at Power Line has probably put together the best summary of this.

Yesterday “the FBI released another 100 pages relating to its investigation of Hillary Clinton’s conduct as Secretary of State.” This was not just an investigation that was limited to her emails and server. By definition, it ended up including her conduct as secretary of state. Why it has taken so long for the FBI to review, to redact, and publish — I mean, a hundred pages is a small quantity. It’s dynamite. What’s in these 100 pages, even what is not redacted is dynamite. But the question, why it has taken so long for the FBI to review, to redact and publish a hundred pages is inexplicable.

The pages that were released yesterday are explosive, big-time explosive. Folks, it’s serious stuff. And it all — you can’t conclude anything other — this woman ought not be anywhere near the levels of power. This woman is as corrupt as anybody. This makes Watergate, as I say, look like Romper Room. Now, you may have seen headlines that Hillary’s State Department tried to pressure the FBI to say that various documents located on her home server were not classified. That was critical. It is critical, obviously, because one of Hillary’s lines of defense was to claim — falsely, as it turned out — that she never sent or received classified documents on her off-the-books email system.

She said that in her first press conference that she held at the U.N., and she said it subsequent times. (imitating Hillary) “I never dealt with. I I I I I I never sent or received classified documents. It was a mistake, I’ll never do it again, I learned from it, but I never sent classified documents.”

But to get the full impact, you have to see the relevant portions of the FBI investigation, and they’re all here, in all cases. They’ve been published and I’m gonna just read to you a so-called executive summary of them. “In the first page, an unidentified FBI employee says he was ‘pressured’ to change the classification of an email to render it unclassified. This pressure came from someone within the FBI.”

This is in FBI documents. This is not somebody’s speculation. It was in what was released yesterday. You remember, now, she has denied trafficking in classified documents, sending or receiving. And yet in one of the pages yesterday, an unidentified FBI employee says he was pressured by someone within the FBI to change the classification of an email to render it unclassified.

This person within the FBI “who said he had been contacted by Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy, who ‘had asked his assistance in altering the email’s classification in exchange for a “quid pro quo.”‘” You may see people denying this left and right at the State Department. It’s in the FBI documents. It happened! Somebody within the FBI called over to state, talked to Patrick Kennedy and asked for his help in changing the classification of the email in exchange for a quid pro quo.

And what was the quid pro quo? “The quid pro quo was that, if the FBI would say the email was unclassified, the State Department would allow the FBI to ‘place more Agents in countries where they are presently forbidden.’ Subsequently, the interviewee was summoned to an ‘all agency’ meeting at the State Department to discuss the classification review of the Hillary Clinton emails. This fact,” and that’s what it is, “is astonishing: the meeting was attended by representatives of the State Department, the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency ‘and other government agencies,’ including, obviously, the FBI.”

So you had an all-agency meeting at the State Department to discuss reviewing the classification of Hillary Clinton’s emails and changing from classified to unclassified, with all of these government agencies at the meeting. “Patrick Kennedy presided. Someone asked whether any of the Hillary emails that were being reviewed for production were classified. Kennedy replied, ‘Well, we’ll see.'”

Meaning, when we get through here, after we’ve declassified a bunch of ’em, probably not. So they had classified emails, agency-wide meeting with all of these different elements of the government to discuss declassifying certain Hillary emails. Why would they do that? To protect her. To protect them. To protect Obama. There were classified emails. She was trafficking in classified email on her unsecure server that she had lied about and denied doing, that Obama claimed he knew nothing about when he did.

And so it was an all-agency meeting where they circled the wagons and after the fact they’re gonna change from classified to unclassified email by email by email in exchange for a quid pro quo for the FBI.

“Following the all agency meeting, Undersecretary of State Kennedy renewed his effort to pressure the FBI to change its classification of the document in question. The FBI representative wouldn’t budge.” The FBI said, “No, we are not gonna help you declassify this classified document.”

“So Kennedy asked who else at the agency he could talk to. The interviewee gave the name of Michael Steinbach.” All of this was in these hundred pages dumped yesterday. “The interviewee then participated in a call with Kennedy and Steinbach, in which Kennedy ‘continued to pressure the FBI to change the classified markings on the email to unclassified.’ Steinbach refused. What happened next is — deserves to be, anyway — a bombshell.

“Prior to ending the conversation, Kennedy,” of the State Department, “asked whether the FBI or State would conduct the public statements on the matter. Steinbach advised Kennedy that the FBI would not comment publicly on the matter.”

Well, I mean, folks, right there is corruption admitted to. Here you had an all-agency meeting to discuss the declassification of an email in order to protect Hillary’s claim that she had not trafficked in them. And everybody at the meeting admits to and knows what’s going on. And the FBI says, “Don’t worry, we’re not gonna talk about it. Steinbach of the FBI told Kennedy we would not comment publicly on the matter.” Meaning, whatever you do, nobody’s gonna know about it. We’re not gonna blow the whistle on you. Whatever you do, go ahead, we’re not talking.

“That was enough for the astonishingly corrupt Hillary Clinton. This is what happened next: The conference call ended and, according to [ ], the Associated Press (AP) published the story within the hour. Former Secretary of State Clinton appeared in front of the press shortly thereafter to deny having sent classified emails on her private email server.”

So before she goes out and speaks, they had this agency-wide meeting to declassify something classified, it ends up happening in exchange for quid pro quo. The FBI sitting in on the meeting, “Okay, we’re not gonna say a word.’ That’s the signal to Hillary to go out and lie that she had never sent classified emails on her private email server.

What you have here, folks, is a clear pattern of corruption that, as I say, makes Watergate look like Romper Room. Hillary’s aide at the State Department, Patrick Kennedy, tried to bribe the FBI with the promise of a quid pro quo, tried to bribe the FBI to change the classification. It was a Benghazi document, by the way. What’s being discussed here is a Benghazi document.

So Patrick Kennedy, Hillary’s aide, tried to bribe the FBI to change the classification of a Benghazi document so as to enable Hillary to lie and say that she did not send or receive classified information on her illegal home server. The FBI refused. James Comey was not involved at this stage, by the way. This was before the serious investigation even began. But they learned of it. Comey learned of this later on. He wasn’t involved at this point.

“Hillary’s aide then asked whether the FBI would be saying anything publicly about the classification issue,” what they just had, the all-agency meeting. “Once assured that the FBI would be silent –” Steinbach said don’t worry, we’re not saying a word “– Hillary took the stage and alleged publicly, and falsely, that she never used her illegal home server to send or receive classified information.”

They had just taken a classified document and agreed to declassify it just because they needed to for her, not because it deserved to be. It was still a classified bit of information, but they declassified it, enabling her to go out and lie. This is just one document. How many critically important documents have been given the same treatment, have been discussed in the same way? The State Department has put some documents, archived them way back down in the basement, nobody to ever see them again.

Folks, this is just one element of what’s in this hundred page dump. But this one, this story illustrates the full-fledged corruption of Hillary Clinton’s State Department, working with the FBI. She says she never trafficked in classified data, sending it or receiving it. She said that after an agency-wide meeting, an all-agency meeting in which a document about Benghazi was declassified.

Richard Nixon only dreamed of this kind of stuff. On the surface it may not sound like it’s that big a deal when treated to governments doing things, our government especially in private, prying eyes don’t see it. She’s been lying through her teeth. Everybody on her side, everybody has been lying about what went on, trying to maintain the idea that she never trafficked in classified documents.

She did, she knew she did. She knew she was lying about it. She corrupted a bunch of agencies to collude and get together to change the classification on her behalf so that she could go out and lie. She was enabled as a liar with the mass participation of a bunch of other government agencies.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Guess what, my friends? Obama’s got a press conference, or just finished one with the prime minister of Italy in the Rose Garden. He was asked about what I just shared with you. Question by Kevin Freking of the AP. “Mr. President, does it distress you that folks at the FBI and State Department talked about the proper level of classification of emails that were on Secretary Clinton’s server? Would you acknowledge the appearance of impropriety and should the State Department officials look into this further.”

OBAMA: You’ve heard directly from both the FBI and the State Department that the notion or the accounts that have been put out there are just not true. And, you know, you can question them again, but based on what we have seen, heard, learned, some of the more sensational implications or appearances, as you stated them, aren’t based on actual events and based on what actually happened and I think derive from sort of overly broad characterizations of interactions between the State Department and the FBI that happen a lot.

RUSH: Holy smokes.

OBAMA: It happened between agencies.

RUSH: He’s flat-out calling everybody involved in this a liar. He’s saying it never happened. The evidence is from the FBI, documents released from the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s conduct as secretary of state, deriving from and originating with her email server. So here’s Mr. Obama who told us that he didn’t know about any of this until he heard about it on the news, which is a lie because he was emailing Mrs. Clinton. By definition, everything he sends is classified. Everything the president sends, everything he writes, it’s classified at origin by virtue of the fact he’s sending it. (imitating Obama) “I didn’t know ’til I read about in the news, just like all of you.”

He was using a fake name! The man who said you like your doctor, keep your doctor, you like your plan, keep your plan. The man that told you your premiums are gonna be reduced $2,500. The man has lied I don’t know how many times about how many things. He and Hillary are in a race to see who’s the king or queen of lying, plus we know this is a corrupt bunch! He’s just called everybody involved — (imitating Obama), “Oh, they have these interagency meetings all the time, you know, these rivalries, they’ve already denied it.” The allegations were not even made. The information comes from the FBI in a 100-page document dump yesterday, and he just called everybody involved a liar. (imitating Obama) “It isn’t true. They said it didn’t happen.” Come on, folks, come on. We know what’s going on.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: For the record, ladies and gentlemen, there are four people, at least four people who have talked about the pressure to take a classified Benghazi document and make it unclassified. Two of the people at the FBI, two of the people the State Department. Four people independently have said they were pressured to do this. Barack Obama has just called them liars as well.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Well, there seems to be some confusion where these hundred pages came from. They are official. And the best I have been able to determine is that the FBI released these 100 pages that everybody’s talking about. (interruption) Well, I usually am. But some people are saying, “No, no, no. The FBI didn’t officially do it. Somebody at the FBI did it ’cause they’re ticked off and they think Hillary should be arrested.”

In other words, somebody’s trying to tell me that a rogue element released documents. Everything I’ve seen is the FBI itself did this and that Comey was not aware or involved. Comey wasn’t involved in this all-agency meeting that took place. Look, let me summarize this and try to tell you why this matters.

This is standard operating procedure for Bill and Hillary Clinton. This is a woman who destroyed subpoenaed documents in a court case way back in the nineties. These are the people that hid billing records and other relevant documents sought by a court for years that mysteriously turned up on a table in the Map Room in the White House during their first term in the White House. Then the whole Lewinsky scandal happened, and we know how everything was — if it hadn’t been for that blue dress — seriously, folks.

I’m not trying to be funny here. If it hadn’t been for that blue dress Bill Clinton would have gotten away with saying (Clinton impression), “I never had sex with that woman, not a single time, not ever, and I never asked anybody to lie,” he would have gotten away with that. We would have never known the truth. If it hadn’t been for the fact that Linda Tripp, I think it was, convinced Lewinsky to give up that blue dress, and she kept the blue dress because it was historical, it was a souvenir. She loved the guy and having his semen was, I guess, a memento.

So there it was. This is how the Clintons operate. They accuse. This is a woman who was thrown off the Nixon Watergate committee as a Democrat lawyer. She was thrown off by Peter Rodino, the chairman, because she was trying to engender things that would deny Nixon and his legal team constitutional rights during the Watergate investigation. This woman is every bit the Alinskyite that Barack Obama is. She was an Alinskyite before Obama was. Her thesis, and she was at Wellesley, was on Alinsky.

But the woman is dishonest. She is dishonest and she is corrupt. Look at the Clinton Foundation. This is an organization set up to take donations in the multiple millions of dollars from foreign governments and foreign wealthy individuals while she was secretary of state and while she’s campaigning for president. Now, folks, the people giving the Clintons money are not doing it ’cause they like her. They’re not giving her $300,000 to make speeches at banks because, wow, she says such interesting things. They are buying the Clintons. They are buying access because the Clintons have made it known their entire public life they can be bought.

The Clintons do not do much of anything aboveboard. (coughing) I need to take a swig here. And of course I can’t allow any dead air, so pardon me a minute here. I’m sorry, folks, but you have to do that. Dead air can trigger some of our stations to go to commercial break. Can’t permit that. So pardon the rudeness. It’s kind of like rattling the paper.

At any rate, so there’s a history, a documented history. Now, if you’re a Millennial — you know what I saw about Millennials the other day? It was last night doing show prep for today. Millennials do not know of the existence and the nature and the truth of Soviet communism. It’s not been taught to them. So “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” the Berlin Wall falling, the Cold War and its meaning and relevance all during the sixties is irrelevant to them.

They simply don’t know. They haven’t been taught about it. And that’s, of course, by design. If you’re not gonna teach communism, if you’re not gonna teach what it really is, it makes selling socialism easy. This is exactly what they’ve done. Same token here. Millennials, a young group of people, do not know of the Clintons of the nineties. To you and me, we know it like the back of our hand. But young people don’t. And some low-information people don’t as well.

So, in addition to all of the things starting with Whitewater, all moving forward, everything the Clintons have done — well, can’t say “everything” — the vast majority of what the Clintons have done has had many purposes, but at the top of the list is personal enrichment.

Do you know that she also stole furniture from the State Department when she left? That’s in this document dump. She stole furniture from the State Department when she left just like they stole furniture from the White House when they left. She just picked up and took what she wanted. Violates all kinds of protocols. Would not hang around with ambassadors, would not travel with them, would not give them the perk of appearing with the secretary of state, would not let them fly in the plane, would not them ride in the limousine.

Only Huma Abedin was allowed body contact. Nobody else. The security agents for the State Department all wanted to quit her detail. She was so rude, mean, disrespectful, none of them wanted to work for her over the course of her four-year term as secretary of state, which comports with everything we’d heard about the way she treated Secret Service agents in the White House and Marines and other uniformed military personnel. The woman is a viper and she’s dishonest and corrupt. And it’s the way of the world in that world the Clintons occupy.

So just to review, hundred pages released by the FBI yesterday clearly detail an all-agency meeting wherein the State Department and a guy named Patrick Kennedy attempted to persuade other government agencies, including the FBI and the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency and others to go along with changing the classification of, in this case, one particular document detailing Benghazi, from classified to unclassified, so that Mrs. Clinton could go out and do a press conference and claim that she had never trafficked in classified information.

And in exchange for doing this, the FBI was offered, in exchange for doing this, an increased presence in foreign countries to do investigations and other things. You remember what the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia were blown up, the FBI’s right there investigating, because American citizens were dead. So the FBI can go, but they are limited in what they can do. State Department has purview. So a carrot was dangled that allowed the FBI a little bit more access and power in exchange for going along with declassifying a classified document.

Four people — two state, two FBI — have added to what’s in these hundred pages claiming they were pressured to go along with this. Now, President Obama just had a press conference concluded recently at the White House with the Italian prime minister in which he was asked about this. Now, there’s two sound bites. I played one, I’m gonna play it again, and then the second bite because they go together.

So here’s the question. “Mr. President, does it distress you that people at the FBI and the State Department talked about the proper level of classification of emails that were on Secretary Clinton’s server? Would you acknowledge the appearance of impropriety, and should the State Department look into this further?”

OBAMA: You’ve heard directly from both the FBI and the State Department that the notion or the accounts that have been put out there are just not true. And, you know, you can question them again, but based on what we have seen, heard, learned, some of the more sensational implications or appearances, as you stated them, aren’t based on actual events and based on what actually happened and I think derive from sort of overly broad characterizations of interactions between the State Department and the FBI that happen a lot. It happened between agencies.

RUSH: The short version of that is (imitating Obama), “It didn’t happen. It’s all made up, not true, uh, these things happen all the time.” So he’s denying, calling people liars. This is in an FBI document dump. This is not something that some right-wing website found and is publishing. This is from the Obama FBI. And he’s claiming everybody involved — and there are independent people. As I say, four others who are claiming they have been pressured to go along with the declassification of classified documents on Mrs. Clinton’s server.

I can imagine some of you, “Rush, what does that matter? There’s so many other things, what does it matter?” It matters because, folks, it’s a culmination of things. The cumulative effect of behavioral patterns here that indicate this woman is dishonest, is corrupt and has no business even taking the oath of office because she cannot honestly do it. She has no business being president of the United States.

She uses the power that you get as an elected official or appointed official at the upper echelons of U.S. government to artificially alter and change things in her favor outside of courts of law, things that no one else could do or try. Things for which we have forced a president to resign simply because he thought he wanted to. Richard Nixon and Watergate, that’s nothing compared to what has actually gone on here, but it gets better.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s the phones. We go back to Alice in New Hyde Park in New York. Great to have you. I’m really glad you waited. Hi.

CALLER: Thank you for taking my call, and thank you for all you’re doing. I think you’re doing a fantastic job at making this all surface. And what I want to say is that I agree with (unintelligible) at the end of the FBI investigation Comey saying there was no evidence of Hillary’s intent. Doesn’t this prove Hillary’s intent?

RUSH: Oh, for crying out loud, great point. Abso-freaking-lutely. The whole no — look, Alice, we know — I’ve got 15 things I want to say here at once, I gotta dial it back. We know, common sense, intelligence guided by experience tells us before we know any of this that Hillary Clinton intended to do exactly what she did! This is just confirming it!

And it wasn’t just Hillary Clinton. There were all kinds of people intending to rig this whole classified versus unclassified documents on her email thing, on her server thing so that she could go out and tell a lie and get away with it. They were actually having meetings over declassifying classified documents. This hundred page document dump from the FBI yesterday, folks, it’s loaded. I’ve only gotten to one aspect of it, and that’s the big meeting.

But the stories here Hillary insulted Democrats, flouted security protocols. I’ve run through those. She was so arrogant, her own security could not stand her. These are the agents for the State Department that kept quitting, refusing to put up with her abuse. FBI docs confirm Hillary treated security detail so rudely that senior agents avoided working for her.

She would not travel with the ambassador at any foreign location she went to. It’s protocol the ambassador meets you at the airport, gets in the limo with you, goes into town, it’s ceremonial. She blew ’em all off and only Huma Abedin was ever allowed to get close to her. And you know the doctor, whoever this guy is that runs around patting her on the back and saying, “Keep breathing. It’s gonna be okay.” It’s devastating. It is devastating stuff that has been dumped and I don’t know how anybody conclude that she had no intent.

Now, this hundred pages, there’s also a question, was this part of the investigation, did Comey, was he involved at this stage when these things were actually happening. But how he didn’t know if he wasn’t, I don’t — look. Another one of the 15 things I wanted to say at one time. We now know that — and we should have followed our instincts all along. I told you all along I never thought this woman was gonna get indicted. It wasn’t gonna happen!

I never believed for a minute that the Democrat Party running this country right now with Barack Obama in the White House was gonna let his Department of Justice indict her. Remember we had all these people that were talking, “Well, he really doesn’t like her, and this drip, drip, drip, drip,” I even fell for it for a while. “This drip, drip, drip, drip, drip stuff, he is trying to destroy her, he’s trying to harm her.” BS. He was participating with her in the trafficking of unsecured documents on her server using a fake name.

This was never gonna go anywhere because it would have included him. And let’s face it, folks, Barack Obama has become what we’re told Nixon wanted to arrange for himself. Nixon wanted to use all of the agencies of government for his benefit and to be able to use them to harm his enemies. Well, it’s happened. It is happening. Richard Nixon never even got close to it.

People just don’t trust what comes out of Washington these days, and for good reason. It’s shame. All of these once highly reputed institutions now living under a cloud of doubt by the very people who often have relied on them for strength and faith within the government and the fact that everything was on the up and up. It really is a devastating thing.

Look, the bottom line for this, as far as I’m concerned, is that we know enough now to know that Hillary Clinton has no business being elected president. All this talk about how Trump is this or Trump is that, the level of corruption and dishonesty here and the using powers of government on your enemies and using them to alter the outcome of events? Yeah, you might be a cynic and say, “Rush, it’s always happened.” Not to this degree. This is the kind of stuff that the conspiracy theorists used to tell us about that people would laugh at. But now we’re living it.